Is the Grave for Tesla Already Dug?

I remember years ago a car company sprang up that painted a vision that captivated an audience.

Born from a big honking Goliath of a company, Saturn came to market in the early 90’s with a product line that was at best subpar compared to its modern day competitors, but the messaging and image created by the brands marketing team birthed a class of people who fell in love with Saturn.

Remind you, this was all before Facebook, Twitter, iPhone and most of the modern things we take for granted now existed. But Saturn created a want, a need and a desire amongst its customer base. And out of a little factory in Spring Hill Tennessee (about an hour south of Nashville) a new vehicle was born.

Truth be told, I wanted a first generation SC2. It was cool, it had flip up headlights, was reasonably quick for the time, and most importantly priced at around $13K was in theory affordable. Of course, I was also but a junior in High School so while I wanted one, and on several occasions was able to con a sales rep (Saturn had a no-haggle pricing strategy) into a test drive, the truth was without a job and any prospect of a job given where we lived at the time, there would be no Saturn parked in my driveway.

But fortunately for Saturn, hundreds of thousands of people did find room in their garage for a Saturn, and a sort of quasi vehicular cult was formed. The Saturn faithful. Not wanting to miss an opportunity to capitalize on a subpar product with a customer base willing to overlook the obvious fact that any Honda or Toyota of the day was in fact a vastly superior product, Saturn invited its cars back to Spring Hill for a reunion, and the owners of those cars were allowed to join in the fun and festivities.

We all know Saturn eventually failed, unable to deliver a superior product in a crowded marketplace. Whereas Honda and Toyota was and continues to be on a very intentional deliberate march to continually improve their vehicle offerings, Saturn brought out a simply terrible warmed over version of their first models and rebadged mid-size car that just wasn’t at all what Saturn started out to be. Where GM originally planned to be hands off and let Saturn be its own brand, the simple economy of scale dictated badge engineering and as such before it all ended a simply terrible SUV with a Honda sourced engine along with one of the worlds ugliest minivans wore Saturn badges.

And as such the brand died and Saturn along with many other brands rode off into the sunset with barely a soul really missing its absence.

I can’t help but look at Tesla and see all the markings of a Saturn style ride into the inevitable sunset of brands that no longer exist.

Tesla has a tremendous fan base and good will with its customers. Tesla has something truly unique, much like Apple they have a huge potential customer base for product. But unlike Apple whose customers know that when Apple says their newest iPhone X will ship in 2-3 weeks, Tesla thus far has been unable to deliver on its most important product to date.

And there isn’t a solution or revised delivery schedule yet that any reasonable person can accurately rely on given the track record of each and every delivery date thus far across ALL product lines being missed.

Tesla is a great idea that has managed to crank out a few niche vehicles in a very competitive marketplace, but a large scale manufacturer its not. And just like a Saturn homecoming in Spring Hill, Tesla can produce all the verbiage it wants in an attempt to keep the base excited, but in the end if it is unable to actually produce cars in any meaningful volume, the fact is it will die (or be absorbed).

And we know what being absorbed does to a brand. Think of Saab being absorbed by GM. Saab had a crazy faithful customer base, what Saab didn’t have was customers who thought driving a warmed over Grand Am (G5) that happened to have its ignition switch moved to the center floor qualified it to wear the Saab badge.

As I fought the crazies at Walmart I saw a Saab SUV, I wouldn’t have known it was a Saab but for the badging as it was in fact just a GM SUV in disguise.

And just like Saturn, Saab faithful dispersed and moved on to other brands. Whether their allegiance and loyalty to what they now drive is still in effect I don’t know, but what I do know is that they aren’t loyal to that which they can’t have. And most are smart enough to know that a GM badged “Saab” is not the same as a Saab.

And likewise, assuming Tesla got absorbed, would a Ford or GM branded Tesla have the same cache as a Tesla as we know it today?

My guess is, “No.” But not for the reasons you might think. Here’s the thing. Ford and GM know how to crank out cars in mass, they know what it takes to get a car to market, and they know how to deal with manufacturing issues because they’ve been dealing with them for the last hundred years or so. I’m not being critical of Tesla, but many a person has tried and failed, and credit does go to Tesla for being able to turn out as many cars thus far as they have, but the reality is despite the love affair investors have had with Tesla, there is no reasonable person alive that can argue that Tesla is somehow worth more than a Ford or GM when it comes to valuation.

Can Tesla survive. If I was a wagering man I’d bet against it. Could I be wrong, you bet. But more than see it fail, I’d love to see it survive and be ran in such a way that the product got to the people. But a caveat there again must be raised, it is all when and good to deliver a product that is being subsidized by the American taxpayer. Let the product speak for itself in a competitive marketplace and allow the market to decide instead of putting money on the hood of every vehicle sold.

Toyota faces that challenge with the Prius, a surprisingly good car that is $3-4k more expensive than a comparable sized Corolla or Civic, and yet people choose the Prius as a way to make a statement about issues they value. Likewise in an environment that isn’t subsidized allow the buyers to make the choice. If a $35k Model 3 makes more sense than a loaded Accord or base 3-Series BMW to a potential buyer, Tesla will start to see market share grow.

So whats the solution to Tesla? To be honest with you I don’t know. What I do know is absent any substantive product volume, it will fail regardless of how good the product might be. Level the playing field taking away tax incentives and let Tesla sink or swim just like all others before it and those yet to come.

The difference between Saturn and Tesla is that Tesla really does have a superior product and it will take years for other companies to catch up to what they have TODAY. They also have two other significant product lines, the solar roof and grid storage.

If I were to bet which company will be the largest automaker in 10 years, I would not place my chips on Ford or GM. They are dinosaur companies with dinosaur cultures and are effectively sheep versus actually pushing the market someplace new. They are making some effort (Ford chose a CEO from Silicon Valley), but their legacy BS is going to slow them down and they are way behind on autonomy, car OS, design, and electrification.

I watched a 1hr walkthrough of the Model 3 (recommend you all watch it too) to see how much thought and attention went into every tiny detail of the car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DT0vDMWsq4. In many ways it is actually better than the current gen S/X, something Tesla is not going to advertise. Also have been seeing many more in Silicon Valley, and normal people (non-employees) will start getting their cars by the end of the year.

You may be correct on saying that Saturn isn't a fair comparison in that Saturn actually turned out cars when they said they would and you could actually put down $1000 and drive away in one versus looking at your screen and "building" a Model 3 on a website in hopes that one day, oh heck, someday far from now maybe, just maybe you'll actually get your hands on a Model 3.

Of course if you are lucky to get your hands on a Model 3 and Tesla does call it quits (or more realistically the banks pull the plug on the $$$) you can have one of those unicorn cars that you can't get serviced anywhere since there is no substantive dealer network in place. At least with a Saturn you can still take it to a GM dealer and have some hopes of finding parts to repair what it broken.

I am getting tired of the delusional minds that without good arguments see smoke and mirrors everywhere .... from where does this frustrated hate for Musk come from? .... As a a Nissan fanboy I am even more sick from these one sided stories, why is Nissan doing nothing wrong making electrics? The Leaf looks (even though the quality is better)at least as ugly as a Saturn (ok the 2017 model looks a little bit better, I give you that) ... I bet if you give Goshn some rockets to shoot he would rocket our socks off and on again, why is he not bad? Nissan fanboys like to be spanked too guys, why no grave ready for us? .... something is wrong and not fair in these discussions .... I wonder if electric car discussions damages braincells ......

I have to laugh at the gullible Joes who think Tesla is "years ahead of the competition." They point to things like fast charging Supercharger stations,the widespread availability of Supercharger stations, Tesla's supposed ability with respect to battery technology, styling(??). The main problem with this argument , aside from being based on wishful thinking, is that all of it is dead wrong, not to mention rather stupidly reasoned. As for recharge speed, Tesla is now distinctly behind the curve - Porsche, which hasn't even sold their first electric, has a recharging technology using the world standard protocol, CCS, to recharge in half the time of Tesla's cars - less than 15 minutes using a 350KW CCS charger (Tesla's supecharger outputs less than half the power, at 145KW) and probably will also utilize CCS's top power output , 500KW, before long. Where is Tesla? No matter what Tesla does, it cannot produce recharge times significantly faster than CCS' 350KW charging and will never likely improve upon 500KW charging. Their semi truck, which Musk misleadingly claimed charges at 1000KW or so, is actually recharging at 145KWper input. Musk exaggerates, Musk lies and Musk is a genuine blowhard, in case you've been living on Mars the past several years. Next argument by the Tesla lapdogs, is likely to be that Tesla has fast recharge stations throughout the country. While true, those recharge stations, numbering by next year to be around 1500 or so in the U.S. cannot handle a large number of vehicles. We have 1 million gas pumps in this country, for comparison, and they can each handle at least 5 times more vehicle refuelings than a Tesla charge pod, making their network equal to 5 million Tesal chargers. But Tesla uses a proprietary charging protocol, the result of Musk's attempt to control charging technology. But although Musk desperately tried to entice other automakers to use his protocol, giving it away free, none of the world's automakers bought into it and they are or shortly will be, using the CCS charging protocol. Tesla is a niche manufacturer that can, at most , produce a few electric car models. The world's automakers have already announced at least 120 electric models coming to showrooms over the next several years. GM alone will produce 20, 2 by the end of next Summer, one of which is already available and already outselling all of Tesla's vehicles. Oil companies are already buying up electric charging companies and installing chargers in their gas stations, and European autoakers are banding together and buillding 350KW CCS charge stations along European highways. So guess which charging protocol will be available on every corner?It won't be Tesla's Supecharging protocol, that's for certain. Tesla wil be forced to abandon their charge protocol and convert their Superchager stations to CCS. And that's NOT an opinion. That's a fact far more certain than anything that has ever come out of Musk's mouth. Another invalid argumen

Ohh, not again another Tesla rant, did you not read my Nissan fanboy post? Can you please make a good piece now about Nissan's great super charger network? Since Porsche has made only promises Goshn still rules. I have to edit to my last post that it is not discussions about electric cars but discussions concerning Tesla that seems to make people lose it.

GoshWhat does NISSAN - which has a complete line of other vehicles - have to do with TESLA not producing enough Model 3s and having money problems.

THe problem with TESLA is that they NEVER mass produced a car before - certainly not one that sold in the Tens of thousands of examples per month. ANd since MUSK seems to "know better" - he is trying to re-invent how to do that - rather than learning from History.

AS far as the Charger Network - there is no such thing - there are a few chargers here and there = mostly in URBAN areas or near major interstates - but certainly not enough to make me think I should buy an EV when I live in a rural neighborhood. ANd Tesla has NO dealer network - if something goes wrong - tow the car to the nearest Tesla center - sometimes on the other end of a state. 200-300 mile tows are common - and while Tesla paid for them with the Model S - they are not going to make money doing that for the 3.

Add in the lack of a sales network as well - many people will not go out of their county - or even locality if it is big enough - to buy a TESLA - and its sales model of set pricing will fail when COMPETITION develops - and that is the biggest problem for them. THEY have an open window - right now -being one of 3 players. However - when there are LOTS of players in the market - especially those in the Higher price categories - they will have a problem with LOCAL competition - and Mercedes has dealers all over most states.

So - it is not a rant - it is simply obvious - they must get their act together on the production of the 3 - I would not even consider OTHER models until that one is working. ANd then when competition does come- and only then - will we have an idea of how long Tesla will exist. Will high end customers head for Tesla - or will they want a Mercedes or BMW or Porsche? WIll SOMEONE finally produce an EV in the Model 3 price range that actually looks like a regular car? I suspect Buick will be that car.

@CalMosby Have you seen any CCS chargers? Tesla superchargers and destination chargers are already all over the place and can easily be upgrades to faster standards. Also, you don't think Tesla will enable charging at CCS stations with an adapter like they have for every other charging standard that has been released? By the time these start being deployed I am sure Tesla will one-up them in some way. Also the Semi Megacharger can do 1.6MW, or 400KW per cable pair, which is already higher than CCS.

No - SanJoseDriver - I do not expect TESLA waiters to move to Buick - I expect they will die before they get their model 3s. (You asked for that one)

What I clearly was talking about was when COMPETITION arrives - there will be customers who WILL choose Buick (Which is among the largest sellers in CHINA and has NO feet in a grave) - over other brands. THE reason WHY I say that is because it is likely that a BUICK EV will have more traditional - less controversial styling.

Frankly - that is why I think the "BOLT" is selling in the numbers it does. IT looks like a weird small car - even though it has more interior space than a model S. I feel the same thing for the Prius - and the Leaf as well. None of these LITTLE cars are the answer for the average person. In fact - It is clear that the market has moved to raised Station Wagons (Called Crossovers but we all know what they are) - many come with FWD standard even.

Now - IF Chevrolet had produced that projected SUV first - maybe even a "VOLT" suv too - they would not have enough capacity to meet demand.

By the way - Sanjosedriver - In 2016 - Buick sold over 1.2 million vehicle - TEsla had record sales - just under 85,000. In fact - Buick sold over 220,000 cars in the USA - IF as you say - buick has one foot in the grave - with 1.2 millions sales- how is Elan going to get out of the hole from under them?

I'm really surprised that they sold that many cars. I can't remember the last time I've seen one in Silicon Valley. It looks like their sales used to be 300k/year so sales are somewhat down in the US from their peak but way up in China for some crazy reason.

Consider this ... before 2022 when the electric Buick comes to market you could be the proud owner of a Nissan Leaf, at least the 2017 model looks a little bit more 'regular' and Goshn is a really cool guy. You can just let Tesla and Musk be somebody else his problem, relax and enjoy life (big letters are really bad for your heart you know).

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